not to mention mike atwood's incognito, jeremy elkin's new video, and the eventual DVD release of soleil levant.

with the rise of super-companies, skateboarding has reached such an unprecedented size that there is room in the cracks for a lot of independent companies and collaborations to gain a good amount of exposure. small, foreign-based companies like magenta and polar have managed to gain worldwide followings, and grassroots start-ups like scumco and falcon bowse are gaining traction here in the US.

speaking of falcon bowse, it's a clothing and design company created by the talented mandible homie, brian downey he's currently doing an amazing project on kickstarter, which you can see here: http://falconbowse.com/

he's offering the chance to create your own 5-panel hat out of your own old t-shirts. check how fucking sick this looks:

Alfonso Riveracame all the way from Puerto Rico to NYC--with no plans or places to stay--to see the magenta video premiere. we scooped him up somewhere along the line, and he's been the ill homie ever since we met. he reminded me today that i have a blog, a fact that i have neglected over the past few weeks and months due to work, traveling, life... a bunch of excuses, basically. i blew it, sorry. so here is what Alf has to say.

I came here for the premiere, didn't now what was going to happen. I called Jimmy and Koki, who I met in Puerto Rico, and asked them where they were going to stay in New York. Jimmy was about to come up from Boston and said he didn't know.

I called Yonnie when I landed and he gave me directions to where he was, and I ended up in 95 street. All the way in 95 street. Finally I got on the right train, and by the time I got to Bushwick I had been in train for three hours. Apparently we were on the same train, because Jimmy and Koki got out of the station at the same time I did.

This is my first trip on my own. I have never been to New York by myself before, had nowhere to stay, but Jimmy told me to just go with him, and we went to Colin's house. Jimmy had not even asked Colin before, and we showed up with 4 people!

So I'm at the skate house! 7 people here, the first day, people all over, we woke up and went to skate! The city is so hot, superheated, but we skated every day. There were so many art shows, and it was amazing getting to meet everyone Wednesday at the premiere.

But the skating is amazing. I know after I go home, that this will make me endure. I will learn from it, look at things a different way. Grab it, learn it, take it home. Take it home and use what I see. Skaters here know lots of things and places, surroundings... skaters here are great humans, pushing for different people, for later generations. And meeting Takahiro? Wow. And the way Vivien introduced me to everyone, the way Colin introduced me to his friends. It's like a movie. It was like I was home, working, and suddenly--SNAP, I'm here. It's like skating, it's very hard but when you aren't thinking about the difficulty, you just think about the fun, it's just the essence of skating.

I can't believe everything that has happened to me since I got here. Things like Takahiro filming me today, like Koki killing it with girls all the time, seeing parts of Tengu...can you imagine what it's like here? I don't feel like I'm in an exclusive place, or with exclusive people or anything like that, but Guru said "the most influential men got influential friends". This city makes you like that. Seeing the hard work behind everyone's projects gives you the motivation to really go for it. Like how everyone gets so fucked up the night before, and then the next day they're out there skating and are like, well, what do you got?

I'm never filmed on a VX before, never wrote a blog before. Everything right now is new. Like the way Colin makes such funny faces at everything. People from all over the world are here right now for the video--PR, Japan, France. Here I am where things are happening, where life is happening.

The best time ever in New York is this summer, 2013. It is a defining time. Best time, best place, best people, best experience. I know everything is going to change for me when I go back home.

Let's get out there and skate! Let's make music, make art, make something!
One Love NYC